Care for the environment is on everyone’s agenda these days, with the overproduction of goods, global warming, and single-use plastics clearly taking center stage. Waste is a by-product of the vending and coffee business as well, from plastic-lined coffee cups to the disposal of expired snacks. The industry is looking for ways to become greener and cleaner, but it is vital that all links in the chain do their part.
For Vendon as an IoT, telemetry, and payment solutions provider, contributing to the preservation of the environment means devising solutions that facilitate the operators’ efforts to generate less waste and participate in the circular economy.
If you are looking for ways to make your business greener, here’s how Vendon can assist you to decrease the carbon footprint while increasing your revenue.
Reporting to optimize planograms
One of the main purposes of any IoT and telemetry system is to provide accurate, real-time information about the stock situation in each machine. On the surface, tracking stock levels is useful for monitoring the fleet and generating refill lists. These measures help ensure that the machine is always full and selling.
However, there is more to it. Stock reports help operators make sure that the machines are stocked with the right products that consumers want. Products that sit unsold and are ultimately discarded only contribute to overproduction and misuse of the world’s resources”. Our sales reports and tools make planogram optimization a breeze.
For one, you can quickly understand which products are not selling by having a look at the Sales Report. Use the “Show sales by stock” option to include all products in the report, even the unsold ones. You may be surprised to learn that customers demand different products in different locations.
You can also turn to the Shelf Space Analysis which will give you recommendations on how to optimize the planogram based on past sales. Adding more bestsellers and doing away with dead stock will lead to a quicker turnaround of goods, and reduce waste.
Expiry dates to eliminate food waste
Shelf life can be a painful issue in the vending business, especially for those dealing with fresh food. Not only an expired product can lead to support cases, having to discard expired and unsold items translates to revenue loss.
Thus, for any operator interested in decreasing waste, the expiry date tracking solution from Vendon is a great tool to use. It gives you the flexibility to choose which items to track – all products in the machine or just those with the shortest shelf life.
Plus, this intelligence can help you clear the machine of products that are about to expire; whenever the expiry date is approaching, you can set up a promotion remotely via Vendon Cloud and sell these goods at a discount. That way, you can still turn a profit instead of running into losses.
Deposit fees to manage the packaging
In many countries in the EU and beyond, the packaging deposit scheme is already in place. This initiative is aimed at reducing plastic packaging in landfills and recycling it instead. A surcharge is applied to the products that are part of the scheme, and this deposit is paid back to the customer once they feed the bottle or can into the reverse vending machine.
For operators, this can be an additional burden as the collections must be noted in tax reports. To help our customers, the product pricing setup in Vendon Cloud now includes a field for the deposit fee. That way, every fee collected is accounted for and reported in real-time. Reports are available for download any time of the day so you can always stay on top of things.
Reverse vending to track returns
Operators who sell cold drinks in their machines often provide reverse vending machines to collect plastic bottles and cans, thus decreasing plastic waste. These machines can also benefit from IoT solutions as it is vital for operators to know how much packaging has been collected and what has been paid out.
This data can be easily tracked in Vendon thanks to our support for reverse vending machines. But that’s not it. In addition to receiving data from the machine, the product catalog can also be updated remotely to include new packaging types or remove those no longer accepted. This means cost savings on field visits since machine updates can be handled from the comfort of one’s office or home (or home office).
Electronic invoicing to go paperless
The age of paper is over, with most of our daily business handled electronically. Paper invoices also belong to the past, and Vendon has convenient tools to make an effortless switch to electronic invoicing.
Detailed reports with automation possibilities will be perfect for smaller operators as they take away the time-consuming task of generating reports manually. For larger and technically advanced operators, Vendon offers excellent APIs, suited for integrations with any ERP system. This eliminates the need for paper-based invoicing and makes the process faster and safer.
Any change made for the good of the planet has a much greater impact than initially anticipated. It’s not just about preserving the environment and ensuring a brighter future for the generations to come. These steps will save time and costs in the long run, and allow you to focus on other important aspects of your business, thus contributing to the growth of your company
